My pincushion doll .

Once upon a  time I saw photos of  antique and vinatage  pincushion dolls and  I just fell in love with them and  knew I had to have one.  Sadly they were way beyond my budget so I started looking for a pattern to make one myself.. I was not very succesful but I did realise that I could perhaps do one in crochet .  And when I think crochet it is usually mini crochet.

I am still pretty pleased with the pattern I designed and the way it turned out. She really looks well standing on the table next to the sewing basket., does not she ?

American Miniaturist did publish my pattern for this little darling in issue 81. So if you want to make one yourself  try contacting them for a back issue.  She is done in tatting thread and I used a 0,60 cm crochet hook.

In this photo she is standing next to my crochet hook and the  ball of thread I used.

Yes I did make the tiny pins with the colored heads too.

 And here she is at work !

More about mini cards

 There are a lot more ways of making mini greetings cards so today I am sharing a few more tips with you.

Cupcake cards are very popular now and they are such fun to make.  Look for some nice paper with a cupcake design on it. The best kind is paper with lots of different cakes that are small enough to fit on your cards. That way you can make tons of different cards  using the same ingredients.

There are lots of ways to make these cards.

  The easiest version is just cutting the whole card out of the printed paper. I did that for the second one from the bottom.


If you feel a bit more like fiddling cut out one of the cakes and glue them to the front of a card.  If you use colors that go will together this will look awesome.  The third card from the bottom was done this way.

But you can take it one step further and cut out your cake motive two times. So you have two cakes that are the same. If you use a tiny piece of double sided foam tape you can actually make a 3D cake on your card. If you happen to have some Mod Podge  Dimensional or some clear nail polish you can paint some parts of your cake like the fruit and make it stand out even more.


The cake at the bottom of the card holder and the chocolate heart card were done this way.

How I made the mini cards

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For the cardmakers room I needed lots of cards. Because  I love  card making I did not want to use the cut out printies you often find in magazines  or on line.  You can use them for they are really nice but I wanted   real handmade  cards.

It is actually easier to do than you might think. I made the square cards 1 cm by 1 cm because that was esay to cut. But size it does not really matter much  for cards come in all shapes and sizes. 

The paper you use is important. I found printer paper was too thin and the paper I use for full scale cards was too thick. The solution ?

The envelopes that come with the card blanks you buy are perfect.  If you are not a card maker , recycle old envelopes.  An added bonus is that the envelopes often have a different color on the inside. So you can add more interest to the cards by using that effect and you have two kinds of paper for the price of one . Love a bargain like that !

In the top  photo you will see different techniques I used : Decoupage, nail art stickers, 3 d decoupage, and fabric decoupage.

Nail art is a geat way to begin making mini greetings cards. You can find all kinds of tiny stickers at dollar stores and drug stores.  I really like the tiny white flowers. They look like embossed paper on the cards. Handle them carefully because they tend to break when you lift them off the sticker paper but other than that it is really easy.

There are also flat stickers, little jewels and many other things that will work for your cards.

The next thing I tried was paper decoupage. You will need to find tiny pictures for this. I ended up scanning a sheet of  3 D decoupage pictures  I had and printing them  in the smallest size my printer would do.  All I had to do  then was  cut out the pictures.  At first I used the whole image on the cards. Then   I started adding the little bows and things.  The next step was cutting out parts of the pictures and decoupaging them to the cards. I used Mod Podge and it really worked well.

Different decoupage  cards ready for sale.